More Than Mind Games

Bear with me until I come up with a link between this and sport history/psychology: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez-ljQA2Kn8]

As best as I can remember I’m in the back yard – standing on some grass? in bright sunshine. I’m about two foot tall, and in front of me is a photograph of what later turns out to be Pat Jennings. Pat is wearing a green jumper and the sort of smile that makes little…

Here’s another bit of vintage Youtube. Keep the sound off. Without clicking through to Youtube itself, see if you can gather enough clues from the film to guess the identity of the boss of the boys in blue and white (the real clue comes right at the end, but see how you get on..) [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDLOoZqjss]

I’d gone to Mabel’s Tavern near Kings Cross to chat with a potential co-author about a book on England managers. The 2006 World Cup was still some months away, neither Rooney nor Owen nor Neville nor.. were yet injured, the beer was well-kept and I was thinking James Callaghan=Ron Greenwood. As things stand with English…

Having discovered that my digital camera takes video, I witter on in another of those ego-tripping “films”:

Before the War, Manchester City were the team in the north-west. Here’s an interesting profile of the side, including training scenes shot – to my mind – in the style of Robert Capa: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeKHt5RTSho]

Anyone who’s been reading here for any length of time will know that I support Manchester United; that I do so because I tuned into the 1976 FA Cup Final by accident and began shouting for the losing side; that “support” lost a great deal of its former meaning on the day of the Heysel…

That’s my motto, anyway: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yD7PMxshlY]

Following on from England’s not-at-all-bad performance on Wednesday night, Arsene Wenger has reason to predict greater things coming Wembley-way as a result of the very youth training that’s come in for such criticism lately (here as much as anywhere else): The best time to be England manager will be in the middle of the next…

Everton fans voted yesterday to move away from their ancestral home at Goodison Park to a new ground in Kirkby. Goodison was one of the very first big, recognisably modern football grounds in the world. It was on a large scale from the beginning. Here it is on 27th September 1902 (click to enlarge): I’m…